The Art and Craft of Coffee: An Enthusiast's Guide to Selecting, Roasting, and Brewing Exquisite Coffee

By Kevin Sinnott

“Sinnott’s guide to primo coffee enables readers to fill their cups to the rim . . . with greatness . . . [It] will result in a better cup of joe.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

There is no other beverage that gives you a better way to travel the world than coffee. You can literally taste the volcanic lava from Sumatra, smell the spice fields of India, and lift your spirits to the Colombian mountaintops in your morning cup of joe. The Art and Craft of Coffee shows you how to get the most out of your coffee, from fresh-roasted bean to hand-crafted brew.

In The Art and Craft of Coffee, Kevin Sinnott, the coffee world’s most ardent consumer advocate, educates, inspires, and caffeinates you.

Inside you will find:

• How green coffee beans are farmed and harvested
• Insight into single-origin coffee beans and worldwide coffee harvests
• A photo guide to roasting your own coffee at home
• How to choose the best grinder for your beans
• A complete, visual manual for 9 coffee brewing styles, including French press, vacuum, Chemex, auto-drip, Turkish ibrik, and espresso
• Delicious recipes for dozens of coffee and espresso beverages

“In the decades that Kevin Sinnott has spent meeting with and interviewing hundreds of coffee professionals, rather than crossing over to the dark side and becoming one himself, he has taken what he has learned and translated it from coffee geek-speak into English. Why? For the sole purpose of allowing you to better enjoy your coffee. In short, if you like coffee, you will love this book.” —Oren Bloostein, proprietor of Oren’s Daily Roast

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781610580946

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

It is possible to taste the volcanic lava from Sumatra and to smell the spice fields of India. I know of no better way to travel the world than through a passion for coffee.

Do you remember your first cup of coffee? Mine was on the first date I had with a young woman who is now my wife. We saw Romeo and Juliet one crisp, autumn evening, and her oversize college sweater and the aroma from the chain coffee shop are sensual memoires I can still conjure today.

My next most vivid coffee memory came after my first son was born. We had no money, and we drank House of Millar Mocha Java from the grocery store. I also ground it at the grocery store because I didn’t own a grinder. I brewed it in a basic brewer we’d gotten as a wedding present. I remember it tasting rich and elegant.

One day, I noticed the House of Millar wasn’t on the neighborhood store’s shelves anymore. I was devastated. I drove to a nearby store, and I bought all of the bags left on their shelves. I stored all but one in the freezer.

Meanwhile, a dedicated coffee bean store opened nearby. The store’s owner, Guy, seemed like a laid-back artsy sort, who liked nothing more than to spend his days sampling the various coffees. I became a frequent customer.

Trouble was, as much as I liked Guy’s coffee at his shop, I could never get it to taste the same at home. My wife even started questioning whether we should spend the extra money on Guy’s beans. While I stood my ground (grounds?) on buying good beans, I privately realized the coffee was better when Guy brewed it in his commercial equipment.

I knew it was time to upgrade my home equipment. I bought a burr grinder on clearance and discovered a Chemex at a thrift shop. Each time I improved my brewing equipment, the coffee tasted better. I have never looked back, and I have spent decades mastering the brewing process to ensure the best possible cup of coffee is brewed every time.

This book taps into my decades of coffee brewing experience and teaches you how to make café-quality coffee at home in direct, easy-to-follow instructions—without dogma.

Coffee and wine are more alike than coffee and tea. As with grapes, every nuance possible can be affected by the earth and climate from which coffee comes. These differences can last all the way to the final flavor and aroma from your cup.

A few key themes are explored in these pages:

• Grinding is critical to the brewing process. The job of any coffee grinder is to divide the beans into same-size pieces. This might seem simple, but grinders are the Achilles’ heel of many a home-brewing station. Here, you will learn how best to achieve proper grounds at home.

• Brewing coffee is half art and half chemistry—or alchemy. The exact portions of ground coffee to water, the water temperature and the water’s contact time with the grounds all affect the flavor of the final coffee. It is possible to make two very different tasting beverages from the same beans using different brewing methods or using two identical brewers and simply altering the variables with each brewer.

• Espresso shares many qualities with brewed coffee, but there are some differences that affect the selection of beans, roasting, grinding, and (certainly) brewing that grants it its own chapter.

• We treat coffee botany lightly because the topic could fill a book in itself. Just note that most coffee in the world comes from three or four original plants, and there are a number of variations designed mostly to allow coffee to flourish in a range of climates. While consumers have little control over these variations, I predict they will become more important as they discover the flavor effects each species has on the final cup. Some higher-quality coffee roasters are starting to list the coffee species (such as bourbon, typica, and caturra) on their packaging.

If there’s one thought I hope you come away with after reading this book, it is that coffee should be consumed for pleasure. I used to joke that I’d prefer the worst cup of coffee with my wife to the best cup with her mother. (I no longer say this because my mother-in-law and I have become very close.)

Remember, coffee gives you the chance to travel the world, exploring culture, history, and terroir through a culinary lens. After you read this book, your coffee will taste better than ever and possibly better than you even thought it could.

PART ONE THE BEANS

1 KNOWING YOUR COFFEE BEANS

COFFEE is like wine—hundreds of varieties line the shelves, their names offering little to help you differentiate dark from light or good from bad. And much like wine, the flavor of coffee depends on its source: the bean. Understanding this aspect of coffee is the first step to understanding the whole process. The bean contains the genetic flavor profile of each flavor note. But how do you select the best beans? From what varieties can you choose?

Many variables define each coffee bean type. This chapter focuses on the differences between unroasted beans. In other words, the names and phrases you likely know—French roast, hazelnut, fine ground—show up in later chapters. To find and enjoy the best coffee, you need to start with the basics.

By the end of this chapter, you will know the following:

• What to ask when shopping for coffee, whether at a specialty coffee retail store, at your local grocer, or online

• The difference between coffee varieties. Some differences mean distinctive flavor profiles; others indicate different coffee qualities.

• An understanding of many of the world’s coffee-growing regions

< Raw coffee ships in jute or burlap bags. Recently, innovative foil packaging has proven to protect coffee from outside aromas and moisture that affect beans. Further testing and cost will ultimately determine whether burlap will be replaced, but for now burlap rules.

The History of Coffee

To move forward with coffee knowledge, it’s important to look back at coffee’s history. Little is recorded about its origins, though many (like us) venture educated guesses.

Coffee’s Discovery

There’s the often-circulated, unproven story of Kaldi, a goat herder who observed one of his herd chewing on coffee cherries. Soon, the goat began to dance. Kaldi, following his animal’s good judgment, chewed some cherries and found himself similarly energized. Kaldi takes the coffee cherries to a local monastery, where the monks toss them into a fire. Instead of destroying this tool of the Devil, the fire accidentally roasts them, creating the first coffee.

What has been proven is the plant’s likely regional birthplace, either in Ethiopia or Yemen. The word sounds similar to Ethiopia’s Kaffa region, prompting wide acceptance that the term coffee derived from there. Starting in around 600 CE, men of certain nomadic tribes drank a crushed coffee cherry/ghee (butter) mixture to energize before battles. Muslim monks (before Islam released an official statement) used the crushed cherries before all-night prayer vigils to reap similar energizing benefits.

Religion Meets Coffee

Acceptance of coffee wasn’t always so widespread. Religious groups had to understand and allow this new, strange drink. Islam wrestled with it first: Should the drink be treated like alcohol, a forbidden, euphoric, but intoxicating drink to avoid, or recognized as a gentle, nutritious, refreshing alternative to alcohol? The latter won out and coffee prevailed throughout the Islamic world.

Its first use as a heated beverage likely occurred around the tenth century in Turkey, where other beverages made by brewing toasted herbs and teas first became popular. With its close proximity and active trade with Europeans, Turkey helped coffee spread into the Christian/European world.

The Catholic Church, which seldom delves officially into dietary matters, became embroiled in whether Christians should partake of this new drink. When pressed for an answer, the reigning pope, Clement VIII, insisted on a sip. He instantly proclaimed coffee a good tasting and healthful beverage for Christians. Jewish law, which frequently declares various foods kosher (in accordance with the religion’s rules and customs), deemed coffee allowable.

Coffee Goes Public

The 1500s brought with them the world’s first coffeehouses in present-day Saudi Arabia. With the go-ahead from the church, peasants could now enjoy coffee without fear of persecution. These public places, known as the Kaveh Kanes, offered Muslim men a sanctuary in which to congregate. Similarly, Europe’s coffeehouses were the province of male bonding, fostering business and political activities. With coffee’s increased popularity came increased clout. In the 1500s, the Turkish placed such importance on coffee that a woman could divorce her husband for failure to provide it for her; it was considered as vital as food and shelter.

Coffee Growing No Longer Just for Arabia

By the late 1600s, coffee—all of which came from Yemen and Ethiopia—was Europeans’ drink of choice. But with the explosion of maritime shipping and colonialism at its peak, nations wanted to control their own coffee-drinking destiny by sourcing beans from home. This control meant independence and new industry.

The Dutch, in the mid-1600s, tried first. When they won control of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) in 1658, they began a full-scale coffee industry there; they finally had land on which coffee would grow. In 1699, Dutch colonialists began production in Indonesia, bringing coffee-plant cuttings from India to Java. Curiously, the Dutch did not guard their coffee plant cuttings as carefully as they could have, storing a number in the Amsterdam Botanical Garden and purportedly giving some to other European countries as gifts.

< Meet tomorrow’s coffee trees: coffee seedlings.

If the Dutch shocked historians with their generosity, even more stunning was the liberality of France’s King Louis XIV. Louis distributed cuttings from his single cutting (a gift from the Dutch government in 1714) to various French colonies in the New World. King Louis entrusted infantry officer Captain Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu to take the cuttings to French colonies. This was no easy task. A challenging sea journey became near impossible when coupled with trying to keep a plant alive onboard. De Clieu detailed in his log battles with pirates, a spy on board, storms, drought, and heat. But all along, he nurtured the shoot. Indeed, he claimed his plant survived the difficult voyage only because he shared his water rations with it.

When the boat reached Martinique, the chosen spot for France’s first planting, de Clieu had to make the single plant survive and prosper. He succeeded, motivating local farmers to make coffee, not cocoa, their primary crop. King Louis, who had previously felt lukewarm about de Clieu, honored the man with governorship of Martinique. Meanwhile, cuttings from de Clieu’s plant spread. Soon, all neighboring Caribbean islands possessed coffee, and a new industry was born.

Brazil’s capture of the precious coffee plant from which to build its own empire is equally dramatic. In one account, a Brazilian lieutenant seduces the wife of the governor of French Guiana to obtain a coffee plant cutting supposedly concealed within a bouquet of flowers. This scheme, in 1827, spawned the entire Brazilian coffee industry.

Coffee Meets the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution, which sought to centralize every process, prompted a shift in coffee making from small batch roasters to the use of large roasters and a packaging system that allowed advance roasting and grinding—known as the coffee can. Coffee pioneer John Arbuckle created the first canned coffee in 1865.

The new consumer age focused on maximizing convenience. By the 1920s, most urban consumers in America and Europe were buying roasted and ground cans of coffee. Technology was improving, making coffee far easier to churn out. Commercial coffee roasters produced more coffee in larger batches and less time. Suddenly, a few could meet the masses’ coffee needs.

The loser in this new era was the coffee’s freshness. Instant coffee, popularized by Nestle in the 1930s, brought the ultimate flavor loss. Like so many foods before it, coffee became a commodity, stressing convenience over taste.

FRENCH COFFEE, ENGLISH TEA

France has long had a flourishing coffee culture, but England is known more for its tea. This may seem strange, especially considering England’s early coffeehouse development. The story is complex. Both France and England developed colonial coffee agriculture. France planted in the Caribbean and on Africa’s Ivory Coast; England planted in Ceylon, (modern-day Sri Lanka).

Ceylon was, at one time, plush with